Differences between the 3v3 and 6v6 metagame

Replying to Fish, to me, Japanese people seem to abuse Yache Berry Garchomp, Azumarill, and Focus Sash Crobat (I hate that thing...)

Yeah, 3vs3 is waaay more offensive, to the extent where I can't actually remember the last time I saw Blissey. (Thank Arceus) But, this can often be so more fun. In 6vs6, you have to focus so hard, try to predict your opponents moves for the next 3 turns, keep track of all your Pokemon, and really can take the fun out of things. In 3vs3, it is:

"Rarawr! Me hit you hard with teh close combatz!"
"Ug, on noes, itsa KO!"
"Wham! Gotcha!
"Me talk pwetty one day! *smack*"

This really can take the stres out of battles a bit.
 
Bumping to see what other people are using... I had some success with a focus sash Sucker Punch SD Absol, 1hko's tons of stuff after a SD though your prediction skills have to be spot-on. Seems like the teams who use weird or uncommon stuff have more success than standard teams, since everyone packs counters for the most common OU.
 
It's easier for newbies to get swept 3-0 than to win against a well thought out 3v3 team. It requires a lot more prediction than 6v6, which comes with experience. So no.
 
I am seeing a lot of Yache Berry Garchomp, Hypnosis Gengar, Flinch-Hax Air-Slash Togekiss and Focus Sash everything right now on PBR Wifi. People have also obviously found a way around the hack-filters, because I'm also running into entire teams of shiney, perfectly constructed pokes that aren't all played without any talent.

Good prediction is a huge deal in 3v3, but it gets harder when you run into something random carrying a focus sash and take a hard hit back. Super-effective Infernape pops up this way a lot. Even if you out-speed it, or resist it's first attack and hit back, it could be carrying Focus Sash and will hurt you for at least another turn.

Although, contrary to what has been said about 3v3 being "All offense," I've found SingBliss and Milotic with Hypnosis to be very valuable on various teams. Milotic will survive a Garchomp Outrage or something equally powerful and will allow you to sleep their top attacker. I can also often put their only threat to Milotic or Blissey to sleep on the switch if I predict the incoming poke. Then I can switch to my sweeper for free and often get in a Dragon/Sword Dance/Calm Mind for free and proceed to kill everything in their lineup. However, I don't EVER carry more than one stall/bulky/wall on the team. If I only have one powerful attacker, then I'm not likely to be able to finish off their team before they wear down my walls.
 
I absolutely love PBR's random double battle, but no sleep clause can be a pain. Japanese players have access to Darkrai, so when I see one in their team of six, I always assume (and 95% of the time am correct) they'll lead with it and Dark Void my Pokemon. Quite annoying.

I'm mostly an UU/NU Pokemon user, and PBR allows me to use them with a much better chance of success. Also, I tend to use more esoteric moves, such as Natural Gift. I run a Trick Room team with Rampardos that knows Natural Gift. I don't have the Ganlon Berry for that 80 BP Ice attack, so I use the Pomeg Berry. It's come through for me so many times thanks to the prevalence of Salamence, Dragonite, Rayquaza, and Garchomp. Most of the time, hitting one of the aforementioned dragons with that Natural Gift is a OHKO, assuming they don't carry a Yache Berry. I also run Natural Gift on my Flareon with a Pomeg Berry.

Also, I have a second Trick Room team with a Modest Choice Specs Unown that has an Ice-type Hidden Power. It really tears through those pesky Dragon-, Ground-, and Flying-types. It can easily switch in thanks to the prevalence of Earthquake.
 
Ive found (especially after using pbrs random wifi alot), that a sweeper from either spectrum (or a mixed sweeper and a stat-upper), and a general tank (curselax, cresselia, registeel etc) are probably best and covering most of your bases. Duel types help a lot as well.
 
Sooo... I've done about 10 random wifi battles this afternoon and all but one team I faced lead with a Hypnosis user of some kind. Gengar, Milotic, Yanmega... whatever. Everyone goes for the first-turn sleep and then sets up for a sweep. I highly recommend that you keep some kind of powerful Lum Berry Sweeper on your team and lead with it if you see Gengar, Milotic, Yanmega, Blissey, or any other sleep-inducing pokemon on the opposing side.
 
I personally have never tried PBR wifi, but why not use something like Insomniac Honchkrow? It can't be slept, and eats stuff like Gengar alive with STAB Pursuit or Sucker Punch. Insomniac Banette might also work, but Gar's will be more tempted to Shadow Ball. . . Banette learns Sucker Punch, right? =]

You could also use a lead that gets pwned by sleep to lure them into a hypnosis and switch Honchkrow in, then pursuit on the switch. That'd be evil >=]

Or use an obscenely fast sweeper and make it faster with a Scarf. Weavile, anyone? Although, you could just stick a Lum Berry on 'im and Ice Shard if they carry a sash =\ He has the added advantage of being able to lol at the Dragons. Eh, just a few ideas if I ever get Wifi =) (Do they all suck? =/ )
 
some 3v3 differences i've noticed:

a) Focus Sash is used all the time (mostly on leads). this is also due to
b) Sandstorm teams are far less prevalent. probably because with shorter battles, Sandstorm doesnt slowly wear down your opponents as much. similarly,
c) Stealth Rock and Spikes (and Toxic Spikes for that matter) are seen much less often in 3v3. these matches are faster paced and thus SR doesnt cut health slowly into teams. yup, that means
d) Shedinja is far more common. with less Sandstorm, Spikes and Stealth Rock, it becomes a legitimate threat in a 3v3 metagame. also more common are
e) Sleep-inducing pokemon such as Breloom, Gengar, Yanmega, and Jynx. Sleep Clause is still implemented, but in this case, you can put 1/3 of your opponent's team to sleep rather than a mere 1/6. for this same reason,
f) Sleep counters have become more common as well. it seems every 3v3 team has a Sleep Talker these days, be it Milotic, Heracross, Suicune, Snorlax or whatever, a counter to the ever-prevalent sleepers is almost more important than the sleepers are themselves.

all in all, the metagame shifts into a faster-paced shootout to see who can knock off 3 pokes first, rather than a 6v6 slugfest that can drag on for insane amounts of time. walls are rare and sweepers are everywhere; its a cool metagame but i'd personally rather be playing Standard.
 
The big thing I notice is the requirement for all three pokemon in 3v3 to be very well-rounded. In 6v6, it's very common to see pokemon with moves that are rarely or never used, abilities that don't matter, or hold items that aren't very strategic. In 3v3 you simply can't afford to waste anything that affects the game. You have to cover so many possibilities with your pokemon in 3v3, that certain pokemon can't be used in 3v3 because they are too one-dimensional. In 6v6, pokemon can play specific roles. In 3v3, every pokemon has to be a somewhat of a generalist and utilize every battle characteristic.

For example, you rarely see someone just throw brightpowder on a pokemon because of item clause and the lefties, LO, and choice items are used by other pokes. If a pokemon has brightpowder in 3v3, it's probably very important strategically (Chomp under SS, for example). Lucario's worthless ability is a bigger drawback in 3v3, when other pokemon have abilties that can really affect the battle. Yes, Luke is a good pokemon, but his lack of a decent ability is almost like he's missing a moveslot. In 6v6, it doesn't affect the game too much. In 3v3, you just can't waste anything.
 
Odinwolf said:
Sooo... I've done about 10 random wifi battles this afternoon and all but one team I faced lead with a Hypnosis user of some kind. Gengar, Milotic, Yanmega... whatever. Everyone goes for the first-turn sleep and then sets up for a sweep. I highly recommend that you keep some kind of powerful Lum Berry Sweeper on your team and lead with it if you see Gengar, Milotic, Yanmega, Blissey, or any other sleep-inducing pokemon on the opposing side.
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Somebody should try out Magic Coat Kecleon. Of course, it'll take some prediction to bounce those status effects back at your opponent. Most of those sleepers tend to be Special based so 120 base Special Defense can't hurt either. There's always Trick Room to setup your teammates afterwards and it can hurt Milotic (Thunderbolt/Thunderpunch), Gengar (Shadow Ball/Shadow Sneak/Sucker Punch), Yanmega (Thunderbolt/Thunderpunch/Flamethrower/Fire Punch/Ice Beam/Ice Punch), etc. if they decide not to Sleep you.
 
Little Green Yoda said:
Somebody should try out Magic Coat Kecleon. Of course, it'll take some prediction to bounce those status effects back at your opponent. Most of those sleepers tend to be Special based so 120 base Special Defense can't hurt either. There's always Trick Room to setup your teammates afterwards and it can hurt Milotic (Thunderbolt/Thunderpunch), Gengar (Shadow Ball/Shadow Sneak/Sucker Punch), Yanmega (Thunderbolt/Thunderpunch/Flamethrower/Fire Punch/Ice Beam/Ice Punch), etc. if they decide not to Sleep you.
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kecleon @ Focus Sash

Magic Coat
Trick Room
Skill Swap
Shadow Claw

What about the synchrothiefing xatu from the D/P Analyses section?

name: Synchrothief
move 1: Thief
move 2: Psychic
move 3: Wish
move 4: Thunder Wave / Confuse Ray / Reflect / Light Screen / Tail Wind / U-turn / Psycho Shift
item: Lum Berry
ability: Synchronize
nature: Modest
evs: 252 hp/100 SpAtk/156 Spd

Open w/ something that doesn't like special conditions, then switch to this to synchro the condition, heal w/ lum, then thief their item. wish for healing and support, psychic for damage, then pick a good last move that helps support your team. tailwind seems interesting to set up some pokes w/ average speed to sweep. u-turn is a little more practical and helpful most of the time. psycho shift lets you take another non-sleep condition.

another possibility is early bird dodrio as a lead:

Dodrio @ Choice Band?/Life Orb?/Choice Scarf? (don't know what item since i don't play 3v3, maybe a half damage from ice/elec/rock berry?)

Pluck (could help against some berry users)
Brave Bird/Drill Peck
Pursuit
Mirror Move/Quick Attack (not w/ scarf)/Return/filler/double hit(in case you need to break subs. don't know if this is necessary)

could be an opener i suppose, 110 base attack + brave bird could do a lot. early bird reduces sleep count a lot. if you owuld have previously been asleep for 1 turn, it becomes 0 turns. 2-3 becomes 1 turn, 4-5 becomes 2 turns, etc. can pursuit against gengars etc. the threat of waking up instantly always exists, which in itself should be enough to keep people from attempting sleep. you could always switch it in rather than starting with it, but you might as well start with it i suppose, given its good power and somewhat versatile moveset.

from my 3v3 battling experience, which is not a lot, i have found this team to be fairly effective:

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Poison Heal
Spore
Substitute
Focus Punch
Seed Bomb

100% sleep + amazing power and sub-punching skills makes him a decent opener.

Snorlax @ Leftovers
Immunity
Body Slam
Counter
Earthquake
Crunch

one of my fav pokes. switch into a special attack, hit whatever comes in, most likely a physical sweeper, or paralyze their special sweeper w/ body slam if they stay in. then counter their physical sweeper. as long as you survive the hit, you will almost always OHKO them, instantly destroying 1/3 of their team. also the 30% paralyze off body slam is amazingly helpful. has no counters due to crunch/earthquake. i love taking out ghosts who switch into body slam w/ a well-placed crunch.

Slowbro @ Leftovers/Sitrus Berry
Own Tempo
Surf
Ice Beam
Slack off
Calm Mind

Love this guy. He is one of my favorite walls. He can easily come in on a physical hit, calm mind once, and 1-2HKO them. If he comes in on a physical hit and calm minds once, then again on a special sweeper, he can absorb just about any hit, shrug it off w/ lefties and slack off, keep setting up calm minds, then sweep. leftover when no item clause applies. however, with item clause, sitrus helps a lot, turning 2HKOs to 3HKOs, 3 to 4, etc. allowing for time to slack off once then set up/sweep. assuming identical/no evs, his defensive capabilites are pretty much balanced after a single calm mind.

i really like this team becuase i have a sweeper, a special wall, and a physical wall, but both of my walls have decent attacking power as well.
 
scorchedsky said:
I thought Lum kicked in as soon as the status did, so that Lum-synchronizing in D/P is useless? I might be wrong...
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Nope, synchronize takes effect before the lum berry. However, lum-synchronizing still doesn't work for the purpose of this discussion because sleep cannot by synched.
 
Odinwolf said:
I am seeing a lot of Yache Berry Garchomp, Hypnosis Gengar, Flinch-Hax Air-Slash Togekiss and Focus Sash everything right now on PBR Wifi. People have also obviously found a way around the hack-filters, because I'm also running into entire teams of shiney, perfectly constructed pokes that aren't all played without any talent. ?
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Actually, the filters are incredibly easy to bypass with an AR+PokeSav and some basic knowledge. The hack filters only get the extreme stuff, like excess EVs, and illegal moves and such.
 
If there is one reason to play 6v6 over 3v3, its the effects of the random number generator on the game. With 6 pokemon on the side, the effects of the random elements of the game, like turns of sleep or crits, are given time to balance out for both sides. While you can still get owned when the game is on the line and RNG decides that it hates you, it's nothing like how one random event in 3v3 can ruin your day.

Last night, the RNG hated me. In just a single game, my opponent woke up after just one turn of sleep, then scored critical hits on 3 different attacks that should have been NVE. At the end of the game, it was my Heatran vs. his Yanmega and he flinched me three times in a row to end the game with a win. It was the most ridiculous match I have ever played.

Of course, that's an extreme example, but having just one "highly unlikely" random event end the match for you just isn't fun. 3v3 has been a lot of fun, but I might retire from PBR Wifi to play 6v6 on Shoddy if this keeps up.
 
Uh, aren't the differences between 3x3 and 6x6 kind of obvious? 3x3 doesn't have the Pokémon slots for most teams to be defensive or to cover everything, so you have to have a psuedo-strategy. Also Wobbufett owns!

Oh, shoddy is just as random and frustrating as PBR. And maybe Yanmega had King's Rock or something.
 
3v3 I think boils things down into a more "slug it out" metagame. Obviously you can't cover many weaknesses under the 3v3 environment, which is why I dislike it. No matter how well you build your team you can suddenly walk into a battle you simply cannot win, while with 6v6 you have more flexibility to cover those weaknesses, and generally when you run into a cannot win situation it is your fault.
 
Lord Alchemy said:
3v3 I think boils things down into a more "slug it out" metagame. Obviously you can't cover many weaknesses under the 3v3 environment, which is why I dislike it. No matter how well you build your team you can suddenly walk into a battle you simply cannot win, while with 6v6 you have more flexibility to cover those weaknesses, and generally when you run into a cannot win situation it is your fault.
Click to expand...

To be fair, the PBR metagame ("stadium mode" as some would call it) still requires you to build a 6 member team to cover your weaknesses. The caveat is that you're only using half of your team at a time; team selection for a particular match could screw one over but that is in a player's control.

It has been suggested that if this type of play were to be implemented in a true competitive tournament that players play a best out of 3 match to determine the victor. This would help eliminate most of the "luck" involved in picking the right matchups.
 
Since this was a pretty solid thread, I have no issues bumping this up. I came home from college the other day and now have access to a Wii and WiFi so I can finally play that PBR that I won over the summer. Thus far, I've really enjoyed the 3v3 format though I haven't yet put too much effort into my team. Right now I'm using a fully physical squad consisting of ScarfChomp, DD Tyranitar, CB Weavile, Curse/Selfdestruct Snorlax, DD Gyarados, and Battle Tower Metagross. Not exactly the most synergy there but it does allow me a lot of options and combinations. I've won more than I've lost, but some of those early victories were against cupcake opponents that used the starting rental pass or underevolved pokemon.

Of the opponents I've lost to, only one didn't use any sleep moves. Hypnosis Crobat, Gengar and Spiritomb as well as Spore Breloom are what I've actually faced but I also noticed someone carrying a Yanmega. These pokemon suck for a team like mine. Even when I get the favorable matchup (CS Garchomp) I've had issues OHKOing most of them and I end up getting put to sleep. Then these people either don't know what sleep clause is or don't care so I get screwed. I always check just to see if they'll only put one pokemon to sleep and they never hesitate to use Hypnosis again. Breloom has been the worst since people are aware of Sub/Leech/Spore/FP with Poison Orb and they just sit there and stall you down. My next team will surely abuse sleep moves and pack at least someone with Sleep Talk. I've also found that at times I've wanted Taunt on either Tyranitar or Gyarados but I think all offensive attacks has been more helpful than hurtful.

I've seen a lot of fast, hard hitting attackers as people previously stated. Offense is more valuable than defense but being able to take a hit or two like my team can has often proved the difference between winning and losing. Bulky attackers that I have seen are Swampert and an interesting Lapras; both had Curse. The Lapras was Curse/Waterfall/Ice Shard/Rest with a Chesto Berry. I fought this person a few times and it usually ended with my Snorlax going toe-to-toe with his Lapras in a Curse war.

It's been fun so far (much more enjoyable than Shoddy actually) and for anyone interested I'll post again when I gain some more experience. I have yet to try 2v2 but I do have a fun team I'd like to use for it.
 
I've also just gained access to PBR, and I'm taken aback a little by the dominance of sleep moves. In the standard metagame, sleep is pretty broken and can leave you at 6v5 in a single turn.. In this environment, you're literally losing 1/3 of your team. And then you have to switch out the sleeping Pokemon, meaning the switch might take massive damage too. I've had fun with PBR, but when I come up against a sleep lead, I find myself saying "Sigh, here we go again..."
 
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